Publisher Description

How might poetry help us articulate the body in illness, in work, and in love?Tiffany Atkinson's fourth collection includes the prize-winning sequence 'Dolorimeter', which takes fragments of speech and found text from a hospital residency to pay homage to the inventiveness and humour of patients and staff in a series of meditations on the notion that pain resists language. Away from the wards, other poems consider the strangeness of the workplace and the embarrassing incursions of desire into everyday life, celebrating the ability of poetic language to lay awkwardness and uncertainty alongside unexpected openings and glimpses of revelation. A lumen is a unit of light, but also a channel or an opening inside the body; perhaps, in this collection, it may also serve as a metaphor for the work of the poem itself.

Author Biography

Tiffany Atkinson was born in Berlin in 1972 to an army family, and lived in Wales after moving to Cardiff to take a PhD in Critical Theory. After teaching at Aberystwyth University for some years, she is now Professor in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She won the Cardiff Academi International Poetry Competition in 2001. Her first collection, Kink and Particle (Seren, 2006), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, won the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was shortlisted for the Glen Dimplex New Writers Award. Catulla et al (Bloodaxe Books, 2011), her second collection, was shortlisted for the Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year) in 2012 and was a TLS Book of the Year. Her third collection, So Many Moving Parts (Bloodaxe Books, 2014), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and won the Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year) in 2015. She is the editor of a theoretical textbook, The Body: A Reader (2003), and has strong research interests in the medical humanities, especially the history of anatomy and representations of the body. Her fourth collection, Lumen (Bloodaxe Books, 2021), includes a sequence exploring representations of pain, illness and recovery work that won the 2014 Medicine Unboxed Prize. She is currently working on a series of critical essays about 'the poetics of embarrassment'.

Table of Contents

I Dolorimeter: 19 readings11 /d'lrmt/12 Table 8.1: What makes patients anxious about gastroscopy14 Heroin works15 Found poem I17 Accident & Emergency19 Song of a pain20 McGill Pain Questionnaire (annotated) please tick21 Mr Broad's morphine23 Neuropathy25 SOCRATES27 Found poem II28 A Biblical pain & an aside on bedside manner30 Pranidhana31 A line from the doctor (annotated)32 Clean windows34 A bad cold35 Signs of the body: longitudinal sample at tea break36 Last38 The smokers outside Bronglais hospitalII41 You can't go there50 The heart it's true looks jaunty51 Walking with Virginia52 In this class53 Mantras54 The department of small arts55 Consent56 Dear Sam57 It is a very gracious hotel58 Workshop59 Panels60 There is no sexual relation61 Hymn62 Dog speaks63 Categories of experience c. 201664 The poem Kolkata65 Wire-seller, Lal-Bazar66 Kalighat67 Yoga68 Parable69 Postscript70 21 points for a feminist essay on lm72 Burgeon73 Neighbour74 Experiment76 Eggshell79 Notes

Review

A fresh, moving and brilliantly inventive book... some of the most striking, and touching, moments in the book come from its dry sense of humour... Atkinson sees the absurdity in everyday scenarios, but also their poetic potential. -- Sarah Howe * Poetry Wales, on So Many Moving Parts *
The unexpected imagery always packs a punch... Visceral, and at times unsettling, this darkly iridescent verse is hardly comfort poetry – but that's the point. -- Juanita Coulson * The Lady, on So Many Moving Parts *
This is poetry of acute aliveness... These new poems have the dynamic quality of robust, heightened speech... With these revelatory, refreshing poems, Atkinson conveys a many-faceted self, and frees up possibilities for the voice in poetry. -- Deryn Rees-Jones & Moniza Alvi * Poetry Book Society Bulletin, on So Many Moving Parts *

Long Description

How might poetry help us articulate the body in illness, in work, and in love? Tiffany Atkinson's fourth collection includes the prize-winning sequence 'Dolorimeter', which takes fragments of speech and found text from a hospital residency to pay homage to the inventiveness and humour of patients and staff in a series of meditations on the notion that pain resists language. Away from the wards, other poems consider the strangeness of the workplace and the embarrassing incursions of desire into everyday life, celebrating the ability of poetic language to lay awkwardness and uncertainty alongside unexpected openings and glimpses of revelation. A lumen is a unit of light, but also a channel or an opening inside the body; perhaps, in this collection, it may also serve as a metaphor for the work of the poem itself.

Review Quote

"A fresh, moving and brilliantly inventive book... some of the most striking, and touching, moments in the book come from its dry sense of humour... Atkinson sees the absurdity in everyday scenarios, but also their poetic potential." - Sarah Howe, Poetry Wales, on So Many Moving Parts

Description for Sales People

Tiffany Atkinson's fourth collection Lumen asks how poetry may help us articulate the body in illness, in work, and in love. Lumen includes her sequence 'Dolorimeter', which takes fragments of speech and found text from a hospital residency to pay homage to the inventiveness and humour of patients and staff in meditations on the notion that pain resists language. Her poems about pain won her the 2014 Medicine Unboxed Prize. She is also the editor of a theoretical textbook, The Body: A Reader (2003), and has strong research interests in the medical humanities, especially the history of anatomy and representations of the body. A lumen is a unit of light, but also a channel or an opening inside the body. In this collection, it may also serve as a metaphor for the work of the poem itself.The cover shows an electron microscope photograph of embryonic nerve fibers. Her third collection, So Many Moving Parts (Bloodaxe Books, 2014), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and won the Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year) in 2015. Lumen is also a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.

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